EDIT: Let’s cool it with the downvotes, dudes. We’re not out to cut funding to your black hole detection chamber or revoke the degrees of chiropractors just because a couple of us don’t believe in it, okay? Chill out, participate with the prompt and continue with having a nice day. I’m sure almost everybody has something to add.
I’m not criticizing work so much as all the things where the claim work is done but wasn’t.
As a flow artist, I understand pendulums more than most. I heckin live pendulums! I play with them every day!
Science is good. Science publishing is out of hand.
I agree with you that science publishing can be of variable quality. One solution for the reader IS to never trust one paper alone, scientific knowledge is established when many papers are published about the same topic and give the same conclusions.
So bigger number = more true?
Actually, yes.
Journal Impact Factor (JIF), is a very important part of establishing credibility.
Reputable journals are very selective about what they publish. They’re worried about their JIF.
If you get published in a journal with a high JIF, you can be as close to possible as establishing a foundation of fact, as their articles have a high chance of being both reproducible and accurate.
If there was a casino that took bets for which scientific discoveries would be true ten years from now, I would make money all decade long by betting on high ranking JIF articles.